A wide variety of automobile appearance products are used in consumer applications to maintain the original appearance of automobiles. Specifically, numerous wheel and tire cleaners are commercially available to maintain the appearance of soiled tires and metal or plastic wheels, wheel covers or hubcaps. These tire cleaners are typically acidic formulations, with pH ranges from 2 to 4. The extreme acidity is required to effectively remove brake dust, road soil and grime. These formulations also typically use anionic, amphoteric or nonionic surfactants to enhance the detergency of the tire and wheel cleaning formulation. The extremely low pH of these formulations makes their compatibility poor with many metallic wheels and most of these products are devised for use on clear-coated wheels so there is no (or very low) chance of acid corrosion. The compositions must be washed or wiped from the tires and wheels within 15 seconds to one minute to prevent damage to wheels and also to facilitate cleaning.
Fox example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,733,377, issued to Michael Howe, discloses the use of an acid composition to clean road soil and grime from wheel surfaces. This composition has the disadvantage of low pH and the use of fluoride salts which may be detrimental to the environment and human safety. Other commercial compositions that claim to remove brake dust, road soil and grime use combinations of surfactants, coupling solvents (such as 2-butoxyethanol) and/or strong organic acids such as oxalic, sulfamic, hydroxyacetic or propionic acid. Such strong acidity is required to remove the soil, dust and grime that adheres to wheel and tires substantively. In the relatively rare case of alkaline cleaning agents, a high degree of builder is again needed to loosen transportation deposits.
There exists a need for compositions that reduce the accumulation of dust, soil and grime on vehicle wheels without the use of harsh chemicals. A product that would also function to reduce dust, soil and grime accumulation on surfaces in general would be particularly desirable.